Marisha Pessl Quotes - Page 2

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Those around you can have their novellas, sweet, their short stories of cliché and coincidence, occasionally spiced up with tricks of the quirky, the achingly mundane, the grotesque. A few will even cook up Greek tragedy, those born into misery, destined to die in misery. But you, my bride of quietness, you will craft nothing less than epic with your life. Out of all of them, your story will be the one to last.

Marisha Pessl

Sweet, Epic, Greek

Marisha Pessl (2006). “Special Topics in Calamity Physics”, p.84, Penguin

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Some people, every now and then, simply had to have One Too Many, go drifty voiced and slouch mouthed, swimming willfully around in their own sadness as if it were hot springs.

Marisha Pessl

Spring, Sadness, Swimming

Marisha Pessl (2006). “Special Topics in Calamity Physics”, p.203, Penguin

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Making love to Aurelia was like rummaging through a card catalog in a deserted library, searching for one very obscure, little-read entry on Hungarian poetry.

Marisha Pessl

Making Love, Library, Littles

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Dad's Theory of Arrogance--that everyone always assumes they're the Principal Character of Desire and/or Loathing in everybody else's Broadway Play.

Marisha Pessl

Dad, Character, Play

Marisha Pessl (2006). “Special Topics in Calamity Physics”, p.197, Penguin

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Freak the ferocious out.

Marisha Pessl

Freak

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Within every elaborate lie, a kernel of truth.

Marisha Pessl

Lying, Kernel

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Not returning phone calls is the severest form of torture in the civilized world.

Marisha Pessl

Phones, World, Phone Calls

Marisha Pessl (2006). “Special Topics in Calamity Physics”, p.327, Penguin

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I was aware too how strange adults were, how theirs lives were vaster than they wanted anyone to realize, that they actually stretched on and on like deserts, dry and desolate, with an unpredictable, shifting sea of dunes.

Marisha Pessl

Sea, Adults, Desert

Marisha Pessl (2006). “Special Topics in Calamity Physics”, p.392, Penguin

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His characters are ravaged, beaten. They walk through infernos and emerged charred doves.

Marisha Pessl

Character, Dove, Inferno

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Such things as anguish, woe, affliction, guilt, feelings of awfulness, and utter wretchedness, the bread and butter of Days of Yore and Russians, sadly have very little staying power in these lickety-split Modern Times.

Marisha Pessl

Feelings, Guilt, Affliction

Marisha Pessl (2006). “Special Topics in Calamity Physics”, p.166, Penguin

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It was what accidental deaths did to people, made everybody's sea floor irregular and uneven, causing tidal currents to collide, surge upward, thereby resulting in small yet volatile eddies churning at everybody's surface. (In the more dangerous cases, it created a lasting whirlpool in which the strongest swimmers could drown.)

Marisha Pessl

Sea, People, Swimmer

Marisha Pessl (2006). “Special Topics in Calamity Physics”, p.192, Penguin

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It’s easy to be yourself in the dark.

Marisha Pessl

Life, Being Yourself, Dark

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I'm not afraid of total failure. In the end, we're all just food for worms, so what are we so worried about?

Marisha Pessl

Worried, Ends, Worms

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...I couldn't let go of the thought that it had, in fact, been he, restless and moody Heathcliff. Day after day, he floated through all the Wal-Marts in America, searching for me in a million lonely aisles.

Marisha Pessl

Letting Go, Lonely, America

Marisha Pessl (2006). “Special Topics in Calamity Physics”, p.53, Penguin

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Dad always warned that it was misleading when one imagined people, when one sas them in the Mind's Eye, because one never remembered them as they really were, with as many inconsistencies as there were hairs on a human head (100,000 to 200,000). Instead, the mind used a lazy shorthand, smoothed the person over into their most dominating characteristic--their pessimism or insecurity (something really being lazy, turning them into either Nice or Mean)--and one made the mistake of judging them from this basis alone and risked, on a subsequent encounter, being dangerously surprised.

Marisha Pessl

Dad, Mistake, Nice

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We're living longer, we social network alone with our screens, and our depth of feeling gets shallower. Soon it'll be nothing but a tide pool, then a thimble of water, then a micro drop.

Marisha Pessl

Water, Feelings, Tides

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Juliet and Romeo be damned, you can't be in love until you've flossed your teeth next to the person at least three hundred times.

Marisha Pessl

Teeth, Three, Next

Marisha Pessl (2006). “Special Topics in Calamity Physics”, p.194, Penguin

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Because every one of us has our box, a dark chamber stowing the thing that lanced our heart. It contains what you do everything for, strive for, wound everything around you.

Marisha Pessl

Heart, Dark, Strive

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Sovereign. Deadly. Perfect.

Marisha Pessl

Perfect, Sovereign

Marisha Pessl (2013). “Night Film”, p.73, Random House

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Most people ended up, after only a couple of months, so far away from where they'd intended to go, stuck in some barbed underbrush of a quagmire when they'd meant to head straight to the ocean.

Marisha Pessl

Couple, Ocean, People

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God, the boring relative everyone ignores--no one calls, no one writes--until they need a serious favor.

Marisha Pessl

Writing, Needs, Favors

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It felt as if we'd been to war together. Deep in a jungle, alone, I had relied on them, these strangers. They'd held me up in ways only people could. When it was over, an ending never felt like an ending, only an exhausted draw, we went our separate ways. Be we were bonded forever by the history of it, the simple fact they'd seen the raw side of me and me of them, a side no one, not even closest friends or family had ever seen before, or probably ever would.

Marisha Pessl

War, Simple, People

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It was as if Hannah had sprung a leak and her character, usually so meticulous and contained, was spilling all over the place.

Marisha Pessl

Character, Leaks, Meticulous

Marisha Pessl (2006). “Special Topics in Calamity Physics”, p.201, Penguin

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... suddenly I was a kid in the hall standing outside my locker about to head to Math. But that was how it went sometimes, the English language, when you really needed it, crumbled to clay in your mouth. That's when all the real things were said.

Marisha Pessl

Real, Kids, Math

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Life had been a suit I'd only put on for special occasions. Most of the time I kept it in the back of my closet, forgetting it was there. We were meant to die when it was barely stitched anymore, when the elbows and knees were stained with grass and mud, shoulder pads uneven from people hugging you all the time, downpours and blistering sun, the fabric faded, buttons gone.

Marisha Pessl

People, Hug, Special

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Born: October 26, 1977
Occupation: Writer
Cite this Page: Citation

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